This invention relates to preparations for washing or rinsing hair, i.e. for example shampoos and after-treatment rinses, containing an additive which improves the body and combability of hair.
After washing, the hair of the head is often in a cosmetically unsatisfactory condition. It feels dull, is difficult to comb when wet and, when dry, tends to develop a static charge, which also makes combing difficult and spoils the set of the combed hair.
Accordingly, it is known that conditioning preparations, generally containing cationic surfactants, may be applied to hair after washing or shampooing or conditioning agents may be added to the hair-washing preparations to obtain a certain conditioning effect when the hair is washed. Examples of conditioning agents are, for example, water-soluble proteins, protein degradation products and polycationic polymers, for example cationic cellulose derivatives.
Whereas known auxiliaries provide for a satisfactory improvement in wet combability while cationic surfactants, for example, even though they enable antistatic charging to be reduced, the excessive smoothing of the dry hair which is almost always obtained at the same time is a considerable disadvantage because its effect is that the hair lacks body and is not receptive to styling. The smoothness of the hair is more pronounced, the lower the resistance of the dry hair to combing.
Accordingly, there is a need to find hair shampoos and rinses which considerably reduce the smoothness of dry hair without introducing any tackiness and without excessively reducing wet combability.
It is known from German application No. 24 10 283 that polymers of acrylic acid, methacrylic acid, crotonic acid, itaconic acid, and maleic acid and also copolymers thereof with a monoethylenically unsaturated monomer, particularly ethylene, vinylbenzene, vinylacetate, vinylmethylether and acrylamide, can be added to hair shampoos. However, these products reduce the resistance to combing of dry hair, i.e. they do not achieve the object of the present invention.